This afternoon I realised something. I'm at home for a fortnight from uni, before I move into my new house for next year. Whilst I've been home, I've been to see a lot of my family, and every single family member that I've been to see, and a substantial number of my friends (although not all), immediately after having asked me how I am, get straight on to 'how's your MS?'
It's not a bloody pet! It's not something that I take for walks every day and give treats to if it's good! It's an illness that I happen to suffer from. If I'm honest, it's not a particularly nice one, and unless someone finds a miracle cure, I will probably be encumbered with it for the rest of my life. However, it's also not something that I want to talk about every day. It doesn't (yet) affect every aspect of my life. I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible.
If someone has a cold, you don't immediately associate them with colds every time you see them. If a friend is dyslexic or in a wheelchair, you don't remind them at every opportunity. If someone has cancer, you don't ask them all the time how their cancer is doing. Why ask me about my MS all the time?! If there's something important for you to know about it, I'll tell you, I promise! And if I don't tell you personally, I don't doubt that the family grapevine is still in perfectly good working order...
Once in a while, I would like to forget that I have such a horrible thing wrong with me. Just once, perhaps. Is that really too much to ask?
But of course I can't just turn around and say that to anybody, because I will look spoilt and ungrateful. I like that they care about me and are interested in my well being, but could they not just forget about it for once, and let me be me for a little while, without being me with an incurable illness?
A very good friend of mine told me when I saw him the other day, that he does forget sometimes that I have MS. That made me feel so happy, that there is actually one person that looks at me and doesn't just see a disease. And yet, if it's important, he remembers. If I'm struggling to walk somewhere, or having a bad day, he's quietly sympathetic. It would be nice if everyone was as forgetful as that.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this thread, I guess I just felt like I needed to get it off my chest. Oh well. That done, I'm off to take some meds and go to bed...
